Olia Mykhailiuk

multidisciplinary artist

Multydisciplinary artist. Her art and research practice engaged with the issues of self-identity, decolonization and interaction between landscapes and people. She was born and lives in Kyiv, but her artistic practice is closely connected with travels to different regions of Ukraine. As an artist, she works across a wide range of media including video, photography, installations, performance, etc. She often collaborates with musicians and writers. Most of her projects are characterized by a combination of musical and poetic with documentary.

Resident of Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art (Warsaw, 2012, 2022), Artist-in-Residence at Villa Waldberta (Munich, 2015), Gaude Polonia scholar (Poznan, 2016).

Svitlokola — personal exhibition, Vagabundo (Ivano-Frankivsk, 2023), Ukrainian House (Kyiv, 2023)
No Man is an Island — personal exhibition, Asortmyntna kimnata (Ivano-Frankivsk, 2023)
No Man is an Island. Mariupol — Opera aperta (Kyiv, 2022), City of Literature (Gdansk, 2022), EXIT gallery (Wrocław, 2022), PanDymińska (Warsaw, 2022), More Music Club (Odesa, 2022), Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art (Warsaw, 2023)
No Man is an Island — DCCC (Dnipro, 2022), Ukrainian House and Ladom (Warsaw, 2022), Gdynia Film Centre (Gdynia, 2022), Electrum Ambient Park (Bialystok), City of Literature (Gdansk, 2022), EXIT (Wrocław, 2022), TEMA (Klaipeda, 2022), Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art (Warsaw, 2023)
Irpin. Chronicles of Revival — video notes dedicated to Irpіn and its residents, who after the occupation and hostilities in the city are trying to restore life despite the fact that the war continues. Ukrainian House (Warsaw, 2022), Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (Riga, 2023), Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art (Warsaw, 2023)
rememberMINT — multimedia collage that combines author’s photo/video from Donbass, documentary interviews and performance; presented at festivals of documentary theater and performance Akcent (Prague, 2016) and OtWARta Ząbkowska (Warsaw, 2017), and in ten cities on the frontline in Ukraine (2017). In 2021, as a video, it was demonstrated in Ukraine and Poland. “Decolonial Ecologies” in Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (Riga, 2022). Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art (Warsaw, 2023)
Crimea. The third dimension — audio-visual installations, Urban CAD (Kherson), Crimean Home (Kyiv), Asortymentna Kimnata (Ivano-Frankivsk, 2021)
Say “Light” — exhibition as part of the International Book Arsenal Festival, Mystetskyi Arsenal (Kyiv, 2021)
Drops — personal exhibition, Na Poshti (Ternopil), Asortymentna Kimnata (Ivano-Frankivsk, 2021)
rozdILovI — multidisciplinary project: idea and visualization — Olia Mykhailiuk, poetry — Serhiy Zhadan, music — Oleksiy Vorsoba and Tomasz Sikora, dance — Andrea Maria Handler (started in 2012 and presented at multiple festivals in Ukraine and abroad)
_just_went_away — performance, gallery Gedok (Munich, 2014), center for contemporary art DOX as part of the exhibition “Reconstruction of Memory” (Prague, 2017), as part of the exhibition “On the Frontline” at Museum of Memory and Tolerance (Mexico, 2019) and Oseredok UCEC (Winnipeg, 2020)
In Words — performance as part of the exhibition “A Century of the Ukrainian Abstraction” at Taras Shevchenko National Museum (Kyiv, 2019)
An Endless Journey, or the Aeneid — multimedia collage by Yurii Andrukhovych, Mark Tokar, and Viktor Novozhylov directed by Olia Mykhailiuk, Mystetskyi Arsenal (Kyiv, 2017), National Art Museum of Ukraine (Kyiv, 2018), cities at the front line, as well as Kharkiv, Poltava and Khmelnytskyi as part of literature festivals
Granica — participation in multidisciplinary collaborative project (Poznan-Kyiv-Mariupol, 2017)
wor(l)ds — performance, Cultural Center Giesinger Bahnhof (Munich, 2015), 48 Stunden Neukölln Festival, UP Gallery (Berlin, 2016), Port creative hub (Kyiv, 2017)
God Will Do the Rest — video installation, University of Fine Arts (Poznan, 2016)
The Simplest Words — video poetry, Galeria Labirynt (Lublin, 2016)
cut—shut—tore apart — performance, Giesinger Bahnhof (Munich, 2015)
Albert, or The Highest Form of Execution — show by Yurii Andrukhovych, Uliana Horbachevska and Mark Tokar directed by Olia Mykhailiuk (premiered at Ukrainian festivals ArtPole, Meridian Czernowitz and GogolFest in 2015, as part of International Festival MitOst, was premiered in German in 2017, as part of WROCloveUKRAINA was premiered in Polish)
Samohon—Cynamon—Absinthe — multidisciplinary project by Yurii Andrukhovych and music band Karbido (Wroclaw) with visualization by Olia Mykhailiuk together with vj-group Cube
International Multidisciplinary Festival “Sheshory”, later “ArtPole” — creative director (festival took place in 2003-2014 in Ivano-Frankivsk, Vinnytsia, Luhansk and Odesa regions and in Crimea)

During the annexation of Crimea and Donbass by russia in 2014, Olia Mykhailiuk visited the invaded territories, which resulted in journalistic series Crimea. To Look Into the Eyes and Donbas: It’s All About Love published in “Ukrainska Pravda”. In 2016, she recorded an interview for “Zbruč”, which was included in project “rememberMINT”. Later she had her own blog at LB.ua.